Charity buys new drone interceptors to hunt Russia’s jet Shaheds

Ukrainian charity Come Back Alive has handed frontline units 80 new interceptor drones designed to bring down Russia’s jet-powered Shahed attack drones, also known as Geran-4, paying 13.6 million hryvnias, roughly $302,000 or about $3,800 per drone, with money donated by Ukrainian fuel station chain OKKO.

The foundation announced the delivery in a post on X on Oct. 15, describing the drones as test samples that troops will now evaluate in combat. It did not name the manufacturer or give the interceptors’ speed, range or warhead, and photos released with the announcement show rows of white, four-rotor drones with stubby wings packed in crates.

Come Back Alive said this is not the first batch of jet-Shahed interceptors it has sent to the front, only the first it has made public. Since September, the foundation has contracted several hundred experimental counter-drone systems from different manufacturers under its Dronopad program, with the best performers sent back for refinement and some later moving into serial production.

The charity said it followed the same approach with interceptors built to stop older piston-engine Shaheds, which have since become a standard part of Ukraine’s air defense against Russian long-range drone attacks.

“We think ahead: we analyze the prospects for rapidly scaling up production, retraining pilots and the possibility of an uninterrupted supply of the necessary components,” the Dronopad team said, in a statement translated from Ukrainian.

Russia has been shifting its drone attacks toward faster jet-powered models in the Geran family, its domestically built version of the Iranian Shahed. The newer Geran-4 and Geran-5 can fly at up to 600 km/h (about 370 mph), several times faster than the propeller-driven Shahed-136, and Russia launched nearly 800 jet-powered drones at Ukraine over four days in late August, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. On Sept. 15, Zelensky said Ukraine had successfully tested another interceptor against jet-powered Shaheds, while acknowledging that some aspects of controlling it still needed work.

Interceptor drones that cost a few thousand dollars have become one of Ukraine’s main answers to Russia’s mass drone raids, since firing a surface-to-air missile worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars at each attacker is not sustainable. Catching a jet-powered drone is harder because the interceptor needs much higher speed and a shorter reaction time to close on its target.

Founded in 2014, Come Back Alive is one of Ukraine’s largest charities supplying the armed forces and is licensed to buy military equipment directly for frontline units.